Italy announces plan to fight mafia

The Italian government on Friday appointed the country's top police officers to lead an all-out war on the Calabrian mafia, or 'Ndrangheta, according to Italian News Agency ANSA.

The Italian cabinet also approved a plan for a six-pronged offensive against the powerful crime syndicate, considered to be responsible for the murder of an important local politician two weeks ago.

"This is not a temporary response," said Italian Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu. "It is ambitious, regards the whole of Calabria and is destined to last a long time."

"The fight won't be short or easy," he added.

The job of directing the battle against the 'Ndrangheta was given to Italy's deputy police chief Luigi De Sena, who was appointed prefect of the Calabrian capital, Reggio Calabria, with special powers.

Prosecutors want to gag 'Mafia Cops' lawyers

Talkative defense attorney Bruce Cutler, who once got into serious trouble for comments he made outside court about his client, the late John Gotti, is again the target of government ire for his remarks in the so-called "Mafia Cops" case.

Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn, angered by remarks made by Cutler and his colleague Edward Hayes about the case on television, are asking a judge to issue a gag order against them.

Alleged 'Black Family Mafia' Group Arrested In Car Bust

Federal agents seized more than 60 exotic cars from an Orlando dealership on suspicion they were used to transport cocaine and cash throughout the country for the Black Family Mafia criminal organization, according to a Local 6 News report.

Authorities said eight people, including three from Central Florida, were arrested this week after an extensive investigation. All eight arrested were believed to be members of BFM or Black Family Mafia -- a Detroit-based criminal organization that allegedly dabbles in drugs as well as a rap music record label, Local 6 News reporter Mike DeForest said.

"It is a national organization from Los Angeles to Detroit to Orlando and up and down the eastern seaboard," Drug Enforcement Administration spokesman Stephen Collins said.

Authorities believe Orlando businessman Marc Whaley oversaw the alleged smuggling operation from his two businesses on Old Winter Garden and Lee roads in Orlando, according to a federal indictment.

Doren Fiddler and Ezra Haynes were also arrested in Central Florida with Whaley. Fiddler and Haynes are suspected of being deliverymen in the nationwide operation.

"Mr. Fiddler and Mr. Haynes made trips for Orlando to Georgia transporting large amounts of cash which were believed to be the proceeds of drug activity," U.S. attorney's office spokeswoman Carolyn Adams said.

Mafia Cops' may have known about additional mob murders

Prosecutors are expecting to use evidence of at least a half dozen additional gangland killings in the upcoming trial of the "Mafia Cops," according to court documents and sources familiar with the case.

The mob murders, which occurred from 1987 to 1991, are in addition to the nine homicides charged against former NYPD detectives Louis Eppolito and Stephen Caracappa.Both defendants were arrested in March and charged with acting as spies and hit men for factions of the Lucchese crime family. They have maintained their innocence and are free on $5 million bail each, but are under house arrest as they await a Feb. 6 trial.

Eppolito, 56, and Caracappa, 63, have not been charged in the additional murders, and sources familiar with the case said they were unlikely to be.

But it appears federal prosecutors in Brooklyn may try to show that the former detectives uncovered information about the homicide victims before each died, according to a source familiar with the case who asked not to be identified.

Italy targets gang that has overtaken mafia

Police in Calabria yesterday began a crackdown against a shadowy network thought to have outgrown even the Sicilian mafia.

Scores of suspects in Italy and across Europe were detained in raids that the authorities said had netted nine suspected gangsters, weapons, explosives and drugs.

Their target was the 'ndrangheta, the Calabrian answer to the Sicilian mafia which in the past decade has grown fat on the cocaine traffic from Colombia and is now said to be richer and more powerful than its legendary counterpart across the Strait of Messina.

It is composed of 75 individual gangs with some 7,000 members and an annual revenue of an estimated €35bn (£24bn).

Italy's anti-Mafia chief accuses politicians

ROME (Reuters) - Italy's new national anti-Mafia prosecutor caused a storm on Friday by saying Bernardo Provenzano, the top Mafia chief who has been a fugitive for four decades, had been protected by politicians and policemen.

"People from various professions -- politicians, businessmen and police -- have helped Provenzano remain a fugitive," Pietro Grasso told state television Rai in an interview to be broadcast late on Friday night.

"It was not only a crime organization that provided cover for him," he said, according to advance excerpts.

Until his appointment earlier this month, Grasso was for years the chief anti-Mafia investigator in the Sicilian capital Palermo, and often expressed frustration over the failure to capture Provenzano.

Italian mafia responsible for assassination

Italy's Interior Minister says the 'Ndrangheta mafia group was responsible for Sunday's assassination of a senior centre-left politician as he left a polling booth.

Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu flew to the southern region of Calabria after two masked gunmen shot Francesco Fortugno, vice-president of Calabria's regional government, shortly after he had voted in a national primary ballot to choose a leader for the centre-left opposition.

The killing triggered fears of a rise in Calabrian mafia activity. Fortugno, 54, was the most senior public figure killed in the region since 1989.

Man Who Touched Off Mob Power Struggle Spared Prison

NEW HAVEN, Conn. -- A reputed Mafia captain whose failed shakedown of a Stamford strip club owner touched off a mob power struggle and provided the FBI a rare look into the workings of the Gambino crime family was spared prison time Wednesday.

Ignazio "Iggy" Alogna, 72, of Pocono Lake, Pa., faced up to 20 years in prison but a judge placed him on six months home confinement and three years probation after Alogna said he was a down-on-his-luck retiree and his family's only caregiver.

Reputed Mob Figure Vanishes Mid-Trial

NEW YORK - A reputed mobster facing a five-year prison term in a waterfront corruption case disappeared in the middle of his trial, prompting speculation that he had instead received a Mafia-imposed death penalty.

"I do not consider my client's absence to be a voluntary one," defense attorney Martin Schmukler said in federal court Wednesday after Lawrence Ricci failed to show for the second day in a row.

Ricci, a 60-year-old alleged capo in the Genovese crime family, went on trial Sept. 20 in Brooklyn. He was free on $500,000 bail.

Schmukler said Thursday he would continue with the case: "I'm going to do so as if he's alive and well and sitting in that chair in that courtroom."

Ricci, who lists his occupation as a dairy salesman, was charged with two officials of the International Longshoreman's Association with extortion and fraud in connection with mob domination of the New York waterfront.

Italy vote overshadowed by Mafia-style killing

ROME (Reuters) - Former European Commission President Romano Prodi looked set to be crowned the left's election candidate on Monday but his moment of victory was marred by the Mafia-style killing of a local politician.

Turnout was high for Italy's first primary election vote, held by the center-left opposition on Sunday to choose a candidate to run against Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi in general elections next spring.

But before the polls closed, police said two masked gunmen shot dead Francesco Fortugno, 54-year-old vice president of the regional government of Calabria in the south of the country, as he exited a polling station.

Politicians from across the political spectrum denounced the murder -- the first of its kind in Calabria in 16 years -- and Interior Minister Giuseppe Pisanu said he would fly to the region early on Monday.

"We are working on a response to this attack that will be decisive and forceful," the prosecutor in Locri where the shooting occurred, Giuseppe Carbone, was quoted by local agency ANSA as saying.

Early exit polls gave Prodi 75 percent of the vote, a landslide victory over the six other candidates drawn from across the center-left spectrum and far higher than anticipated.

Second place looked likely to be taken by veteran communist leader Fausto Bertinotti with some 14 percent.

Turnout at the 10,000 polling booths also far exceeded expectations with organizers predicting more than 3 million voters by the time stations closed at 10 p.m. (2000 GMT), three times more than forecast.

Mafia turns scaredy-cat

First, Junior Gotti pens a children's book in prison. Then the mob scion shows up at Sunday Mass.

Now, federal prosecutors are claiming the Gambinos and the Lucheses - among the most bloodthirsty crime families the city has ever known - are just a bunch of pansies.

What's the Mafia come to?

Consider the trial going on in courtroom 26A of Manhattan Federal Court. There a group of Albanian-led mobsters are accused of crimes committed as they wrested control of Astoria's gambling clubs - and the protection money they generated - from the Luchese family.

Federal prosecutors say gang leader Alex Rudaj, 38, had Gottiesque visions of heading a sixth crime family. They claim on one occasion, he and some pals even pushed their way into Rao's, the exclusive East Harlem eatery, demanded John Gotti's old table - and got it.

"The Gambino crime family simply could not stand in the way of the Rudaj organization, and the Rudaj organization took great pride in that," prosecutor Benjamin Gruenstein said.

Mob boss ordered JFK hit, book says

"Mafia Princess" Antoinette Giancana, daughter of the late Chicago mob boss Sam Giancana, claims in a new book that her father ordered the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.

If true, this would make Sam Giancana guilty of one of history's worst crimes. But that doesn't trouble Antoinette Giancana.

"The Kennedys were not kind to my father," she said. "They were just as evil and corrupt as any mafioso."

Giancana teamed up with two University of Illinois at Chicago doctors to write JFK and Sam: The Connection between the Giancana and Kennedy Assassinations. The 217-page book will be published later this month by Cumberland House Publishing.

Giancana's co-authors are Dr. John Hughes, a neurologist, and Dr. Thomas Jobe, a psychiatrist.

Jobe earlier wrote Lyndon Baines Johnson: The Tragic Self, a Psychohistorical Portrayal. He and Hughes then teamed up on a book about the JFK assassination, and enlisted Giancana's help.

Hughes said he did the bulk of the research and writing. But he said Giancana is getting top billing in the list of authors because she's better known.

Giancana's best-selling 1984 memoir, Mafia Princess, was made into a TV movie starring Tony Curtis as Sam and soap opera star Susan Lucci as Antoinette. Now 70, Giancana lives in Elmwood Park. She's a sales associate for a retail chain and markets Giancana Marinara Sauce ("Just Like Dad's, Maybe Better").

Hughes said he read more than 40 books on the JFK assassination and spent almost every weekend for 13 years writing and rewriting the book. He wrote that he used his expertise in neurology to analyze how Kennedy's body moved after he was shot. This led Hughes to conclude that there must have been a shooter on the infamous grassy knoll to Kennedy's right.

Did mob help JFK win Illinois?

The mafia, Hughes wrote, helped Kennedy carry Illinois in the close 1960 election, assuring his victory. In return, JFK was supposed to go easy on the mob. Reneging on the deal, Kennedy unleashed his brother Bobby, the attorney general, on organized crime, the authors claim.

In 1975, Sam Giancana was gunned down while cooking sausage in the basement kitchen of his Oak Park home. The book says the CIA killed Sam Giancana to prevent him from telling a congressional committee about his role in CIA plots to assassinate Cuban leader Fidel Castro.

These theories, scoffs Sam Giancana biographer Bill Brashler, "are as old as the Easter bunny. It's just silliness."

Brashler said Kennedy owed his election to the first Mayor Daley, not to the mob. And even if Sam Giancana felt betrayed, it wasn't the mob's style to murder politicians, much less the president. Finally, it was a trusted bodyguard who killed Sam Giancana, not the CIA. "It was a classic mob hit," Brashler said.

Brashler said he interviewed Antoinette Giancana for his book, The Don: The Life and Death of Sam Giancana. He concluded she knew next to nothing about her dad's business.

The drifter who changed history

Antoinette Giancana said that for the new book she was able to recall long-buried memories during extensive interviews conducted by Jobe.

Conspiracy buffs have proposed 250 theories to explain what "really" happened Nov. 22, 1963, said Ruth Ann Rugg of the Sixth Floor Museum at Dealey Plaza, a JFK assassination museum in Dallas.

But Rugg said the only credible explanation is that Lee Harvey Oswald alone shot Kennedy. Conspiracy theorists simply can't accept that such an insignificant drifter changed history by himself. "We want to believe that there was more to it, that there were huge forces involved," Rugg said.

The Dorset public school girl, the Russian mafia and a £300,000 bank account

An 18-year-old pupil at a girls' boarding school was found with £300,000 in her bank account - money suspected of being at the centre of a Russian mafia laundering operation.

Tamara Platash, who took her A-levels at Sherborne School for Girls in Dorset this year, aroused suspicions at her local bank branch when she tried to transfer £200,000 to an account in China.

	Tamara Platash tried to transfer £200,000

The bank alerted police who blocked the transfer and started an investigation. A total of £303,730.21 in the account has since been frozen.

Officers arrested Russian-born Miss Platash at the school and took her away for questioning. Her mother, Irina, a businesswoman, was arrested when she came over to England for the school's prize-giving ceremony at the end of term.

Police suspect that the money was the proceeds of Russian mafia crime in Britain or was being forwarded for use in criminal activities abroad.

The Crown Prosecution Service ruled that there was insufficient evidence to bring a prosecution against the Platashes and they were released without charge. But the £300,000 has been frozen by the Government's Assets Recovery Agency, which will now attempt to confiscate the money through the High Court.

The case has embarrassed staff at the 106-year-old Sherborne School for Girls, which, with fees of £20,000 a year, has 350 boarding pupils aged 11 to 18. The school, according to its prospectus, "honours the timeless traditions of honesty and integrity".

Wholesale fish market's relocation put on hold after Mafia-related talk

NEW YORK (AP) - A judge put the relocation plans of the nation's largest wholesale fish market on ice Friday after hearing claims that it could be vulnerable to Mafia infiltration when it moves to its new site.

State Supreme Court Justice Carol Edmead extended a restraining order blocking fishmongers from taking over unloading duties at the Fulton Fish Market, which is moving to the Bronx after more than 180 years on the Manhattan waterfront.

Sellers insist they cannot pay the costs associated with the new, more sanitary market unless they take over the unloading. They say they can operate faster and cheaper than current unloader Laro Service Systems.

Laro was installed by former Mayor Rudolph Giuliani in 1995 to take over the historically mob-tainted business of unloading fish trucks. The mob had been using the unloading service to extort payments from sellers dependent on quick service in the highly time-sensitive, $1 billion-a-year fish market.

Police fear Balkan mafia eager to sell A-bomb materials to Iran

Iran’s quest to become a nuclear power has galvanised the Balkan mafias, security sour ces have warned following the discovery of potentially lethal nuclear enrichment mat erial in the region.

Last week, Bulgarian customs officials prevented a car from crossing into Romania after discovering 3.5kg of hafnium, a metallic element that is used in the nuclear enrichment process and which could potentially be employed in the manufacture of radioactive “dirty bombs”.

According to General Veleri Petrov, the Bulgarian police chief, the hafnium consignment, discovered at the Ruse border crossing point, was destined for a Romanian mafia with Middle Eastern connections. One Bulgarian and three Romanian nationals in the car were arrested.

A Bulgarian police spokes man said the consignment of the rare metal was concealed on the person of the Bulgarian driver of the car.

Mafia retirement benefits often include funeral, little else

NEW YORK -- No pension, no medical benefits, no prescription plan. When you're a mob boss, retirement is more bronze casket than golden parachute.

Since the 1930s ascension of the Mafia, its leaders have departed "The Life" almost exclusively through their deaths. Albert Anastasia, Carmine Galante and "Big Paul" Castellano were brutally (and memorably) assassinated; Vito Genovese, John Gotti and "Fat Tony" Salerno died in prison.

More legal wrangling in 'Mafia Cops' case

The "Mafia Cops" were arraigned yesterday on a new murder indictment, but the federal judge hearing the case again was puzzled by the government's tactics in bringing the latest charges.

Louis Eppolito, 56, and Stephen Caracappa, 63, entered not guilty pleas to the new indictment filed last week. The new charges added an additional murder allegation against Eppolito, as well as others against Caracappa alleging falsification of identification documents.

Both defendants were arrested in March on charges that they worked as moles for the mob and that from 1986 to 1992, they played roles in eight murders, two attempted murders and a murder conspiracy.

In recent months, federal Judge Jack B. Weinstein in Brooklyn has expressed doubts about whether the key racketeering conspiracy charge, which includes the murders, was within the statute of limitations. To address Weinstein's concerns, federal prosecutors retooled their indictment.

Yesterday, Weinstein questioned why prosecutors chose not to bring federal murder-for-hire charges, which he believes could easily get around the potential legal problems with the indictment. He also indicated the case could still have statute of limitations problems.

Hung jury in NY Mafia son trial

John "Junior" Gotti is currently in prison

A judge has declared a mistrial in a racketeering case against the son of an infamous New York Mafia godfather.

Jurors said they could not agree on verdicts against 41-year-old John A "Junior" Gotti, son of the late head of the powerful Gambino crime family.

Gotti, who has stayed in prison since serving out a sentence for extortion, hugged his lawyers after the decision.

The jury did agree on one count - acquitting Gotti of conspiracy to commit securities fraud.

US District Judge Shira Scheindlin said she is likely to agree to a request to allow bail for Gotti.

"It's my view that the time has come," Ms Scheindlin said in the courtroom.

Gotti has already served a five-year sentence on other racketeering charges.

The new charges were brought against him last year before he was due to be released.

'Round two'

One of those who testified against Gotti was Curtis Sliwa, a former radio host and founder of the anti-crime citizens group, the Guardian Angels.

Mr Sliwa says that Gotti ordered him to be attacked in retaliation for comments made about his father on the radio programme.

"It's a hung jury, it's a mistrial, it's round two for me, it doesn't mean John 'Junior' Gotti is innocent," Mr Sliwa said.

Prosecutors have said they will seek a retrial.

Almost 500 foreign mafia gangs operate in Spain

MADRID — There are now almost 500 foreign mafia gangs in Spain and last year they made EUR 1.2 billion in profit, a report says.

The Spanish General Police Commission report said the numbers are growing at an alarming rate.

Last year, they made at least EUR 1bn profits, though they were also said to own property worth EUR 1.4bn.

There are now 494 mafia gangs, employing 10,000 people, whereas there were only 486 organisations three years ago.

Bulgarians, Romanians, Poles and the Chinese are the fastest growing gangs.

But though no numbers were given, the report said a sizeable number are also British-born Asian crooks.

They have replaced the

generation of British criminals on the so-called Costa del Crime.

Though drug dealing is their bread and butter, they are also involved in time-share fraud, lottery swindles and stealing high-performance cars to order.

The report said they are prepared to use extreme violence to get their ends or to settle scores with rival gangs.

In 2004, there were nine murders linked to organised crime, though police believe there were many more.

The gangs are also spreading their tentacles across the country, away from southern Spain.

The report lists areas of "high" mafia activity on the Costa del Sol, further north from Almeria right up the coast to Valencia, in Catalonia, in north-east Spain, Madrid and the Basque Country.

NATO must fight Afghan ‘drugs mafia’

BERLIN: NATO must focus on destroying Afghanistan’s ‘drugs mafia’ when the alliance expands its peacekeeping mission across the country next year, British Defence Secretary John Reid said on Wednesday.

“They have to be defeated, they have to be destroyed,” said Reid, whose nation will take the lead role in the NATO force next year as it moves into volatile southern Afghanistan. NATO defence ministers were discussing the expansion of the Afghan mission that will see allied troops, mostly from Europe and Canada, replace some US units who have been fighting the remnants of the Taliban. Reid said on Tuesday that thousands of extra allied troops would be needed as NATO widens the mission. At a news conference on Wednesday he declined to say how many British troops would be deployed when his country takes over from the Americans in southern Helmand province next spring.

NATO’s 11,000-strong force currently operates in the Afghan capital, Kabul, and in the northern and western half of the country. The separate US-led combat mission with about 20,000 troops covers the south and east.